


(we are all in the gutter) but some of us are looking at the stars

by shokubeni



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Character Study, Durmstrang, Gen, Strong Female Characters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-13
Updated: 2018-08-13
Packaged: 2019-06-27 01:06:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 606
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15674937
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shokubeni/pseuds/shokubeni
Summary: durmstrang revolves around five facultiesthe nature one was thanks of nerida vulchanova





	(we are all in the gutter) but some of us are looking at the stars

**Author's Note:**

> this is a character study i made of nerida vulchanova for the durmstrang network at tumblr  
> i love strong women more than anything

i. nerida vulchanova’s mother died when she was born, and even if nerida’s mouth opened so big to bawl and cry when she was delivered to the world, her eyes didn’t open at all. an elderly wise woman from the town told her grandmother her eyes were useless, and she was blind, but her grandmother had read in the stars something different, something bigger. long halls and swirls of magic, vast walls and unkind winds. her grandchild wasn’t blind, her grandchild got the sight andher grandchild was going to make history.

a week later, she fluttered her eyes open and they were as deep and blue as the night sky, and her grandmother smiled.

she only used her name, nerida, in public, because when they were alone and she whispered secrets over herbs under the starry sky, she always called her prorok.

prophet.

 

ii. her grandmother died of smallpox when she turned fourteen, and not even the herbs, and the readings and the pleadings to the sky saved her, when she shivered, covered in scabs and sores, dying in her arms.

nerida cried her death for a week straight, and the thunder and the lightning took over the sky along with her mourning.

if she was sad, and if her word was darkening, then at least, the bolts were going to illuminate the sky.

 

iii. durmstrang opened its doors three years after nerida’s lost her grandmother. a big castle with thick stone walls and endless corridors, cold and desolate, inhospitable. as nerida ran her hand through the roughness of one of the walls, her mind was filled with images of fire and books and warmth and magic.

 

iv. the first year, all the durmstrang attendees were women.

women nerida wanted to protect, women nerida wanted to teach and nourish, women who had the sight, women who knew all the secrets of a human body, women who knew how to cure or how to kill with the same herb, women who could make a summer morning into a snowstorm, women who could talk and control creatures, women who could turn mould into gold, women who could look up at the sky and read it as easily as palm of a hand.

women like her.  
women like her grandmother.

 

v. even before there was a system, and the faculties were created, nerida made one herself.  
the nature one.

back then, it didn’t have books or specialists.  
it didn’t have classrooms, or lectures, or readings or essays.

back then, it was just nerida and all the knowledge she collected from the world and from her grandmother, the whispers poured into her with care, the secrets and the magic she could feel in the tips of her fingers every time she walked into the forest that circled around the institute to protect them from pry eyes.

back then, it was just nerida and her coven of women, and nature.  
she just needed her hands and her eyes to teach and to show, and she just needed ears and hands to listen and grow.

nothing was more important to her than the study of the magic of nature. nature was everywhere and so was magic.

it was in the sky above her and it was in the soil underneath her feet, it was in the rain and the snow, it was in the stars and the movements of the planets, it was in the water, and the wind and the fire. it was in all living creatures. it was the trees and the plants and the flowers.

because nature, for her, was the beginning of everything.  
and magic was the end.

**Author's Note:**

> say hi to me at my [tumblr](https://crvdence.tumblr.com)!


End file.
